


and if you love (well that should be enough).

by thenapkinthief



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Apocalypse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenapkinthief/pseuds/thenapkinthief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He doesn't forgive her, can't yet, but he stops hating her in that moment." Written in anticipation of Epitaph Two now Jossed but only in details I think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and if you love (well that should be enough).

Adelle watches him over her glass of vodka. Her gaze annoys him. There isn’t any fear, or wariness there, just boredom and fatigue. He wants to grab her throat again, force something into her expression, even if it is just shock. But his hand merely grips the gun more tightly. He hates her, everything in him is telling him to just get this done and kill her. The gun stays stubbornly by his side.

***

Finding Caroline is easier than he thought it would be. He had in a way been looking forward to seeing her again, expecting to meet Echo. He’s disappointed when it is just plain old Caroline sitting in front of him, an annoying idealist who got into this because of _animal rights_ and whose expected doom in Arizona he had actually looked forward too. She rails against Rossum and he gets bored quickly. He remembers Adelle’s words, oddly appropriate. “We got drugged. We behaved like idiot children. It happens. It's over. You may go.” And he modifies it in his head as Caroline tries to say how she’s not going to help anyone at the Dollhouse. “We ended the world. We behaved like idiot egomaniacs. It happens. It’s hell, so can we solve the problem now?” He somehow doesn’t think Caroline would appreciate this so he waits for the girl to wear herself out before he begins.

“I don’t want to help Rossum or DeWitt anymore than you do,” he ignores that he’s helping Adelle right now, but he is a spy, he and the truth are but brief acquaintances. “They are the only one with any idea as to how to fix this though.” He thinks that should be enough. But he knows it won’t be so he opens his mouth again. “So why don’t you just listen to the other, smarter voices in your head and get going.” And he lost his patience. His impulses have been shot to hell since he got out of The Attic but as he gets Caroline to come back (with Echo, and surprisingly, Ballard’s help) he thinks he did pretty well, despite the fact that he has now committed himself to going back to a woman who had him put in The Attic, _twice_.

***

She sits next to him silently as they watch the others prepare for an outing. He watches critically as the new redhead who has joined them takes a second too long to check her gun. His hand brushes hers. She grabs it and he thinks after all this he might just be done in by a common heart attack. Her fingers are tight and cold against his skin. They aren't holding hands, she is grasping at his, her fingers trying to incase the whole breadth, her pinky resting in the crook between his thumb and index finger. He looks over to her. She looks straight ahead.

"I'm sorry," she says.

He wants to walk out then, leave her alone, refuse her benediction, and tell her to go fuck herself. She turns and looks at him with the most open expression he’s ever seen on her face. And the hatred and the anger crumble and that _shouldn't be possible_ but it is. It is because while he was living in the hell of his own mind, she was living in a hell of her own making. It is possible because she's looking at him and she's as broken as he is. He doesn't forgive her, can't yet, but he stops hating her in that moment. He gets up and joins Caroline and Ballard (proof of how much he wants to get away from the stifling situation) to prepare for their expedition.

***

Space does not exist in a post-apocalyptic world. With more than a dozen of them in one small ranch house they didn't quite have the luxury of hiding from each other. And really she's the only one he can stand. He tried in the beginning but he found himself bored and irritated by most of the other occupants of the house. But Adelle is still Adelle.

He doesn't have to like her, or forgive her, but at least she's intelligent and sarcastic enough for them to be talk to each other without wanting to kill the other person (and really with the amount of guns lying around he _is_ surprised they haven't had any murders yet).

It's a scary fact to face but he realizes that he and Adelle, despite everything, are still in synch. It's natural to walk with her, and talk to her first and most often. His responses are blunter. She asks less for his opinion and more for his argument. They're rougher and more equals and unbalanced than ever.

It makes him uncomfortable. All of the boundaries that kept them in check before have been eradicated by this new harshness and lack of pretense between them.

And if he thinks about it (which, by the way, he really tries not to do) he's terrified. He can't like her and he can't kill her and in his experience that confusion means he's going to end up doing something really, really stupid.

***

She's shot. There's blood pouring from her shoulder and there's no time to worry about decency so her shirt is gone ten seconds after they find refuge. He's assisting Caroline who is working furiously to summon up some doctor from a long ago imprint. He holds the shirt he's just ripped off her to the wound, feels it grows denser and heavier beneath his grasp as the blood pours out. Caroline better come up with the goods soon otherwise he was going to have to start digging and sewing and he was pretty damn sure Adelle wouldn't talk to him for awhile after he'd given her a jagged, large, uneven scar. "Got her." Caroline says. He removes the shirt and doesn't notice the blood staining his hand as Caroline, Echo, whoever the hell sews the pale skin together.

It's later when the wound has closed and stopped bleeding that he looks down and sees the scar. It reaches from the indent of her waist and barely brushes the top of her hip bone. He wonders how she got it.

"Parting gifts."

He looks up. He thought she was unconscious but she's staring at him from under eyelids heavy with the delirium of pain. He clears his throat. Her words disconcert him, and he’s forced to ask her softly, "how'd you get it?"

Her head tries to cock to the side, but in her current state it merely ends up falling so her cheekbone rests on her shoulder. "You gave it to me."

He wonders for a moment if that's a metaphor, and then he remembers. Being readied for The Attic hurt to such an extent that he doesn't really remember much other than the pain. But the jog to his memory brings a rush of blue-tinged images. He remembers grabbing the gun not caring if it was him or her that he shot. He remembers pulling the trigger and watching her step back. Remembers the way Boyd had taken a step towards her, and she so stoic had brushed the handler off, too focused on destroying his mind.

He looks at the scar. It’s neat, barely visible and for a bullet wound that’s impressive, figures it is Saunders’ work. He fights the urge to touch the proof of their past. When he looks back up she's unconscious.

He covers her with his jacket while they wait for the cover of darkness to make their escape.

***

There are things he thinks and dreams about in the dark. There's his childhood, a ridiculously cliché picture of suburbia and a nuclear family. There's later too, a dead mother when he was twelve, a father who tried, and Laurence running away to something else. There is after. Missions and assignments that didn’t always go well, and sometimes went too well. There's The Attic, of course there's The Attic. Those are the type of dreams that he's not quite sure are over when he wakes up. There are other things too that creep up upon him. Things about pale scarred skin, and dark hair curling around his fingers.

And on the worst nights, they all blend together. He sees his father’s home as it would be now, ruined and desecrated like everything else. He feels her hand in his as they walk through the apocalypse. He thinks that the most nightmarish thing about those thoughts is that _he_ is gripping her hand, depending on her to keep him upright through it all.

It happens once too often and suddenly what he thinks about in the night becomes what he does in the day. Shooting together at bad things because they communicate well ends up becoming him backing her up against whatever stupid idea Ballard has come up. Steps that happen to coincide become standing to close and his hands wanting to grab at her. Conversations that have no content and are just sarcastic comments to pass the time suddenly contain the personal question and the accidental laugh.

She is under his skin; an itch he can't scratch.

***

There is no grand moment of revelation that what was an annoyance has become a comfort. There is no fight that turns to sex. There is no other bullet wound that brings them closer. There are simply a series of small steps that take them back to where they were. And then one day, he realizes he trusts her. He accepts it wearily, he is beginning to think that everything about him and Adelle is inevitable.

***

They're deciding on a final act, a do or die sort of thing. He has spent a week poking holes in Adelle's plan so that they have a better idea to bring to the table when they start working with Ballard and Caroline. He feels the tension grow in his bones.

“When we get out of the room we’re going to need to set the charges within-“

“Two Minutes. I know, Adelle.”

She looks up from the drawings of a blue print spread between them. “I’m just making sure,” Adelle says an edge present in her voice. There’s an edge present in all of them now though. Death looms over them, and it all feels far too claustrophobic. No room left for the future or the past. He walks around the table. Adelle straightens, a hand on her hip she watches him, preparing for a fight. He stands in front of her, too close.

He looks at her. Catalogues the fine arch of her brows, the green of her eyes, the high cheeks, the fineness of her bones, her lips. He brings up his hand, she’s watching him with a hint of confusion but she’s not moving away, so he rests his thumb against her bottom lip. Traces the bow of her lips, feels her exhales against his skin. His hand cradles her cheek. It’s too gentle for them he thinks, but he doesn’t move.

“Mr. Dominic?”

He’s been calling her Adelle for two years and she still calls him Mr. Dominic. Still keeps this distance between them and he wants to destroy that vestige of separation so he moves in quickly. Presses his lips against hers, his hand around the back of her neck as he tries to pull her closer, and closer. She meets him, opens her lips against his, and his hands grasp at her hips. There is a door for the small room they’ve been using to plan which means it has more privacy than where either of them is sleeping so they stay there. Her mouth is insistent against his, and that would give him a certain thrill and sense of power except he knows that right now she could ask the world and he’d do everything to give it to her.

She pulls back. And for a moment they stare at each other, they say nothing but a decision is reached. They kiss with more restraint this time. This slow matched pace more natural for them both. The slight pressure he applies to her hips separates them for a moment as they take of their shirts (plain simple t-shirts the silk blouses and carefully pressed cotton long forgotten). They have never really touched each other before, they have grasped at each other with the intent to kill or save the other, but they have never _touched_. They touch now. Caresses and brushes and all the things they could’ve been years ago and all the things they are combining in sensation and this thing between them that unravels and comes back together binding them instead of separating them this time.

And he thinks as he pushes her back onto the plans for their attack that if they survive this, that will be a hell of a lot scarier than the pretty certain death they face.

***

Weeks pass, the planning progresses slowly. He sleeps with her every night now. The others who were at the Dollhouse look at them with a bizarre, impossible mix of disbelief and relief that the inevitable has occurred. He doesn’t really care what they think. He sleeps better now, he sleeps regularly. He knows somehow that he should rebel at that, but he doesn’t, not now.

She shifts and reaches for him in the haze of sleep. He brings her close and traces the uneven patch of skin on her side. Sleep begins to descend and he thinks disconnected thoughts. Thinks about doomed and destined and the scars that bind them, that perhaps always have.

He loves her. He hasn’t always, all of the befores, all of the times he didn’t kill her, all of the times he protected her, those were just him teetering along the precipice of this feeling.

He loves her. It was always rather inevitable though.

He loves her. They’re probably going to die.

He loves her. He won’t tell her.

He loves her. Their world is hell, and somehow, for this moment in the dark of night and her soft breath against his collarbone, it’s something like enough.


End file.
